5 Movies Global Citizens Need to Watch Before Earth Day

Each week, streaming sites like Netflix, HBO, and Amazon release a whole spate of new movies for us to gobble up.

Global Citizen has scoured the endless landscape of TV, movies, and streaming services to find the best things for you to watch. Check back every week as we present the latest and best offerings for you to enjoy.

Available on iTunes for just $0.99, this documentary considers the national and global security implications of a warming planet. Water and food shortages, extreme weather patterns, and rising sea-levels, this documentary argues, will lead to increasing instability, and more crises like the one in Syria.

The highest-grossing film of all time, “Avatar” portrays an indigenous culture’s struggle to survive an invasion from earth-based explorers. The Na'vi are an advanced race that live in harmony with nature and whose way of life is under grave threat from exploitative forces.

“Avatar,” director James Cameron said of the film, “wasn’t so much of a message as it was a feeling — a feeling that you needed to connect better with nature.”

More than 8 million tons of plastic are dumped into the world’s oceans each year, posing a grave threat to this complex underwater ecosystem. This Netflix documentary shows how, eventually, this plastic waste ends up in an unsettling place: our stomachs.

Produced in collaboration with Patagonia, “Jumbo Wild” takes us to the backcountry of British Columbia where a coalition of First Nations people, environmentalists, and locals have fought back against a proposed all-seasons resort development that would threaten sacred lands and threatened grizzly bear populations for more than 20 years.

The argument made by “Love Thy Nature” is quite simple: if humans were to deepen their relationship with nature, they’d be more inclined to help protect it. Narrated by actor Liam Neeson, this documentary urges you to embark on this critical journey to save the planet.